StratCan Innovation

Collaboration with the medical industry and KI innovations promotes translation of research findings into development of new drugs, biomarkers and treatments.

StratCan strives to accelerate the innovation and commercialization potential within the environment with a focused innovation agenda and a dedicated Innovation Officer.

The StratCan research themes that have generated a high level of industry interest include studies of tumor microenvironment and its role in cancer development and treatment response, as well as efforts to identify and validate new drug targets and identify biomarkers or genetic markers predicting therapeutic response. The latter is especially important considering the strong industry interest to allocate patients to clinical studies where the chance of a beneficial response is best and where one can provide individualized and tailored cancer treatments.

To this end, technologies to count DNA and RNA molecules, as well as studies proving variable expression of established markers during tumor progression from local to metastatic disease, provide important contributions. The ongoing StratCan supported ClinSeq study paves the way for more effective drug development and future personalized care.

Innovation Officer

In collaboration with Karolinska Institutet Innovations AB (KI Innovations), StratCan has a dedicated Innovation Officer with the aim of supporting innovation and commercialization.

Mats Ferm started at KI Innovations in March 2014 and will with his broad background give strategic advice and help the researchers identify potential commercialization possibilities in their research. He will also assist with practical advice regarding meetings and collaborations as well as identification of possibilities for financial support.

My experience from the pharma industry makes me confident that I can provide important competence, he says. I hope to serve as a catalyst for the researchers in the pursuit to further increase the benefits of their research for society. That would make this a very prosperous cross-fertilization.

Mats Ferm received his PhD at Karolinska Institutet in 1992 in the area of tumorimmunology. During 20 years he worked with drug discovery and development, including early clinical trials, at Astra Zeneca. The assignment as Innovation Officer for StratCan will now take him back to the cancer research field.

Mats Ferm´s expertise includes also areas such as neurology and neuroinflammation. He will now divide his time between KI innovations, and the role as Innovation Officer for StratCan, and his own consult work. Together with a former colleague he has also started a research company with a project in early development.

Initiative background

StratCan and KI Innovations AB signed a collaboration agreement in December 2013 for a more focused industry/ innovation agenda 2014-15.

These efforts will strengthen the ongoing collaboration between several individual research groups and companies, aim to give rise to new collaborations and allow for a more coordinated approach towards interaction with the industrial sector.